Back in 2007, I finished my month-long Star Wars celebration with a memory of the time I met the Pibbot, the lesser-known cousin of the famous Coca-Cola robot. You can visit that post here.

A couple of weeks ago, I was pleased to shed new light on my fading memory of my impromptu meeting back in 1980. I was viewing some 1980 newspapers on microfilm looking for the ad when Empire played at our theater...and then I ran across this ad.

Wow, it was something that I hadn’t expected seeing and didn’t realize Carl’s Market ran an ad for the promotion. Back in 1980, I had no clue the Pibbot was going to be at the store and it was such an exciting surprise. Kinda like finding this newspaper ad! Now I know that I had my picture taken with Pibbot on September 20th. I always thought it was sometime in the summer.

I was hoping to see an article in the paper about Pibbot’s visit, but unfortunately, this important local event slipped by the newspaper reporters. I did find another ad that Pibbot, (I should say Kobot as stated in the ad), visited a few towns away in Lebanon at a car dealership. I like that the ad says, "Meet Kobot a living robot cousin to R2-D2."

Now it makes me wonder whatever happened to my friend Pibbot and did he make it out of Missouri? Maybe he’s sitting in the back of someone’s storage building waiting to be found. If so, I hope I’m the one who finds him. I'm sure he'd feel right at home in Neato Coolville.

(Check out the newspaper photo found by my pal Glen of a Cobot invading a B.C. Canada Burger King)

My favorite Empire trading card is this one of the classic “Gone with the Wind” style poster painted by Roger Kastel. I had this poster hanging on my wall for years when I was a kid. Hmm... I guess that makes me a romantic!

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Since 2008, the Growing Up Star Wars flickr group has become the number one spot on the internet to view vintage photographs of the first Star Wars generation. Glen Mullaly and I have been curators of this amazing gallery of more than a thousand images and people continue to add photos all the time. If you haven’t visited for a while be sure to stop by.

An antique dealer friend of mine picked up a large childhood Star Wars collection at a garage sale back in the mid-90's. I ended up with the collection and inside a folder was this Carrie Fisher autograph. The original owner of the collection was a girl who's hero was Princess Leia. I love that Carrie signed it Galactically Yours!

One of my earliest collections started in the second grade when I began saving pencils. I loved ‘em and it seemed I couldn’t collect enough of ‘em.

My mind must’ve blown up when I received my Star Wars fan club packet of goodies all related to the Empire Strikes Back. The coolest thing in the lot was the pencil! As seen above, I still have two original pencils from my youth.

The ad below is from Bantha Tracks, the Star Wars fan club newsletter.

You know, there should have been a Star Wars TV show back in the 1980's called Space Pirates: The Adventures of Lando and Han. Now that's a YouTube 80's cop style mash-up waiting to happen. I can see Lando and Han always on the run getting into space bar fights and hitting on all the space girls with the sounds of Meco playing in the background.

Just a few seconds on the screen and these “Bounty Hunters” opened up the imaginations of kids worldwide and they didn’t even do anything but stand there. My favorite Bounty Hunter has always been Bossk with Boba falling in at a close second.

Everything about this card is great from the caption, “Champions of Freedom” to the publicity pose or our rebel heroes.

It always bugged me when I was kid that the third card set has a yellow border instead of the regular silver border like the first two sets. I guess technically this set should be considered the green border set, but everyone seems to call it the yellow border set.

The above clipping is from the April 30, 1979 issue of Boxoffice magazine.

My pal Mike Middleton sent me this Kansas City, Missouri newspaper ad for the August 15, 1979 re-release of Star Wars. Attached to the film was the first Empire trailer to show footage from the sequel.

I remember wishing I could win this Kenner Sweepstakes when I was a kid. Below is the flyer that I saved from childhood.

Wow, that would have been the ultimate! I wonder if there's any snapshots or newspaper articles about the kid who won? I'd like to see photos from the event with the winner walking in with C-3PO and R2 just like in the illustration.

The closest is this photo from the 1980 Toy Fair Catalog as seen on the Star Wars Collectors Archive Site. Also, you can see a very tiny photo of the sweepstakes newspaper ad by clicking here. It was on display at Kenner's 1980 Toy Fair booth and is the one on the right.